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Don't mix oil with oxygen

Here is a little reminder for everyone about the dangers of oxygen. It's been 20 years sense I went to weilding school in the Army. They talked about the dangers then but I've never heard anything on the subject sense then.

As I remember it... this is called 'spontanious combustion'... we learned to respect this when I was employed as an aircraft mechanic.

In a nutshell: The higher the O2 content (%) in the air surrounding a combustible material, the lower the temp at which it will combust. In PURE O2... oil and grease will ignite at room temp... NOT KIDDING.

We were VERY careful when we added O2 to a corp jet... one has to wipe the fittings with a clean rag (not even your hand)... to be SURE there was no oil or combustible material in the joint when topping off the O2 tank.

There was a case of a corp jet back in 1978 or 79 (I think it was a G2) which burned, due to O2 getting into grease in the nosewheelwell...where the O2 filling fitting is...

Thanks for bringing It up again. I saw an employee huffing O2 strait off the bottle one day. He got a drug test and time off until the results where back. Failed barbiturates and fired. He had enough lotion on his face to burn down the shop.

We had a guy killed here maybe 15-20 years ago leak testing or blowing out a system with oxygen.

For years our shop stored all our oxygen bottles in a shed outside the shop....the shed also contained the 500 gallon oil tank where we poured our waste oil.

We had to keep the oxygen and acetelyne seperate and someone determined that it would be best to put the oxygen in the shed.

I made jokes about it for years.....but it was only about 2 years ago that they moved the bottles out of the shed.

Somehow I think it was arrogance that led to the decision to leave the bottles there for years..... After someone noticed them out there....me...a lowly employee... I can almost see the person in charge of that decision...saying... "How dare that hourly employee challenge or make fun of my decision to store that oxidizer in that shed containing combustible fuel"...... "Put more oxygen in there....spill some oil on the floor and crack open all bottles that are put in their refilling"..........lol

Even the redneck hayseed gases delivery guy never got the connection.....he would week after week....get the empties and replenish them with new bottles.....probably being carefull not to slip on the oil spilled on the floor......lol